It's Amazing The Lengths 'Music Supporters' Will Go To In Trying To Trash Success Stories

from the and-sad dept

One thing I often find amazing in debates and discussions about new business models for content creators and artists, is how those of us who are often (falsely) accused of "hating" artists cheer on and celebrate the creative success stories, while those who position themselves as "defenders of artists rights" are often spew all sorts of vile and hatred towards those artists who find unique and amazing paths to success. Take, for example, the case of Amanda Palmer. I won't bother to link to one (somewhat well known) individual (a lawyer, of course) within the entertainment industry, who simply doesn't deserve the publicity, but he publicly dismissed Palmer's massively successful Kickstarter campaign by suggesting that it was entirely based on the fact that she was (1) once on a label (2) has a famous husband (who this person believes, incorrectly, is running a copyright reform group) and most ridiculous of all (3) that he "wouldn't be surprised" if it turned out that Google was really behind her success. If you know anything about any of this, you would know that all of that is paranoid rantings that have no basis in reality.

Other claims might not go that far, but they do seem to go to great lengths to attack Palmer's success here, with reasoning that doesn't hold up under much scrutiny. Take, for example, the long and rambling argument of Daniel Brockman, suggesting that Palmer's success here does not bode well for the future of the music industry because (and really, the leap of logic here is astounding) using Kickstarter is similar to using a SuperPAC:

the Internet has allowed artists and fans to have a more direct relationship, but it has also given artists a more direct way to shake their fans upside down for pocket change. Much has been made of the fact that, in the traditional model, the $14.99 you plunked down for a CD at Sam Goody resulted in a pittance actually finding its way to the artist’s pocket. But if you give that money directly to the artist, don’t you now have a greater say in what music that artist makes? The traditional model allows artists to do their thing, with the label as an intermediary between the artist and the desires of fans. Without that intermediary, fans can and probably should feel free to express their opinions on the work that they are paying for directly.

What this may mean is that a small, rich, vocal cabal of music fans could grow to have an undue impact on the way music progresses, as artists within this direct patronage model have to appease those that put food on their table. I can’t help but see this as not dissimilar from the way that election fundraising has developed in recent years; in a sense, Kickstarter success stories like Palmer’s are the Super PACs of the music world. Think about it: someone like Newt Gingrich, for example, should have been out of the race a long time ago, except that he had the massive financial backing of an extremely small and extremely wealthy group of backers. Were he to be successful in his bid, he would be completely in the debt of those that paid for him to be there-- and the less people that pay for him to be in that position of power, the worse it is for everyone, right?

Brockman supports this position by claiming that these few "big donors" have too much power. Of course, the math doesn't really show that. The "small donors" add up to quite a bit of money here. Furthermore, it seems kind of insulting and ridiculous to claim that this is "shaking fans upside down." The whole reason that these models work so well is that they let fans support artists at a level with which they are most comfortable. That's not shaking fans upside down. In economics, it's called differentiating your market, and it's a sign of a good business.

Furthermore, this whole theory seems to be based on the idea that fans "don't get anything" out of supporting artists they love. He seems to be at a complete loss as to why anyone would pay for anything if they weren't getting money back. To wit:

I guess the head-scratching aspect here, for me, is who are these people giving thousands of dollars? In the traditional record label model, investors give money to the label, the label finds talent and songs and matches them up together, and that investor money is spread out amongst a roster of artists; most of those artists lose money for the label but then the label will hit on a Mariah Carey or a Nickelback and make back enough money to recoup any losses. The investors are re-paid, the artists are paid (barely, maybe), and the label retains dough to keep the thing going. In this Kickstarter model, though, there aren’t investors, there are only donors; meaning that the artist isn’t beholden to the label, but is instead in some manner beholden to the donor.

It's as if he's never recognized that people get all sorts of value and benefits in the non-monetary fashion. It's as if he ignores all of the great things that Amanda provides the fans who pay up. It's as if he ignores the fact that people aren't supporting Amanda specifically because of the dollar value of the return, but because they want to support Amanda. And they get value in that fact alone. This is the kind of thing you would think the defenders of "the rights of artists" would embrace. It highlights just how much fans really value artists. But, for some reason, it seems to make them really upset -- perhaps because it shows how much the fans value the artists, rather than the gatekeepers who used to take most of the money.

There's nothing head-scratching about fans supporting the artists they love. There's no reason to fear the "undue influence" of superfans. A big part of the reason they're superfans in the first place is because they absolutely love what comes from the artist's own creative work, and they're actually pretty loathe to tamper with that. Contrast that to the traditional record deal, wherein there is a single entity, who usually has overwhelming control over the direction of the product, and only has one thing in mind: how can it profit the most, rather than how can it create the most meaningful work.

Call me crazy, but I can't see an argument that suggests true fans supporting an artist creates worse output than a large corporate entity controlling the process. It seems bizarre to complain that artists won't get paid in the future, while also complaining that they aren't getting paid now because of piracy -- and then to complain even more when an artist figures out how to get paid.

Speaking of cabals...

The mind boggles. I may have to stop reading Techdirt because Mike goes and quotes things so astoundingly insane that it breaks my brain. Please Mike, think of those without paradox-absorbing-crumple-zones.

What this may mean is that a small, rich, vocal cabal of music fans could grow to have an undue impact on the way music progresses, as artists within this direct patronage model have to appease those that put food on their table.

Replace one word here: "fans" to "executives" - and you'd have much of what was wrong with the recording industry for decades. And instead of most of the money from fans getting to the artists as with Kickstarter, almost nothing went from the executives to the artists (except for the miniscule number of superstars).

Re: Re: Re: Re: Speaking of cabals...

*sigh*

Point: He seemed to be agreeing, not arguing. Not calling out, emphasizing. Not refuting, adding additional perspective. Hence your confusion.

To wit:What this may mean is that a small, rich, vocal cabal of music executives could grow to have an undue impact on the way music progresses, as artists within this direct patronage model have to appease those that put food on their table.
Phrasing the quote like this makes it obvious what is wrong with the music industry. The executives have undue influence on the direction of music. The exec's quote was easily refuted by showing the inherent hypocrisy.

Re: Speaking of cabals...

Reading these quotes pretty much made my head explode too. I was so stunned that after I convinced my brain to return to it's cubicle and get back to work, that I actually had to look up this Brockman guy and find out who the hell he is and why anyone would value his opinion...

My record so far is one for two... found out who he is, but still no evidence to suggest he matters... oh well.

Re: Speaking of cabals...

Since there's a lot of great music on the internet that's done just for the joy of making it I wouldn't worry about the rich having an undue influence on music, provided the internet remains free and open.

Re: It's an old saying

Re: Re: It's an old saying

YES!! I say we start lobbying to have gravity made illegal. Think of all the damage done by gravity: heart attacks, short people not being able to play basket ball, sagging breasts... Factories can function far more efficiently with the constant burden imposed by gravity, without it we could eliminate world hunger (except for those people who obviously must want to be hungry), and stop all bad things. So let's get to work banishing gravity - we can start by charging people an extra fee for using it, and then go on to create trade agreements ensuring that other countries will do the same!

Re: Re: Re: It's an old saying

On the other claw, once could argue that most places on the universe/galaxy have very little gravity, and here we are, sitting on an abundant supply of natural occurring gravity, and all we do is whine about skinned knees and "it's hard to make it to orbit".

;-P

Sagging breasts though, that's a good idea. Let's outlaw gravity being able to affect breasts.

Re: It's an old saying

No, no. You see, fans want to use money to influence the artists, this would make the artists sellouts that just want to just cater to the whims of a minority of rich fans. The labels are protecting the artists from this awful money, so that their creative vision remains intact. Thanks to the labels, the corrupting influence of the money never touches the artist.

FTFY

What this may mean is that a small, rich, vocal cabal of labels could grow to have an undue impact on the way music progresses, as artists within this label model have to appease those that put food on their table. I can’t help but see this as not dissimilar from the way that election fundraising has developed in recent years; in a sense, label success stories like Metallica are the Super PACs of the music world. Think about it: someone like Newt Gingrich, for example, should have been out of the race a long time ago, except that he had the massive financial backing of an extremely small and extremely wealthy group of backers. Were he to be successful in his bid, he would be completely in the debt of those that paid for him to be there-- and the less people that pay for him to be in that position of power, the worse it is for everyone, right?

"Much has been made of the fact that, in the traditional model, the $14.99 you plunked down for a CD at Sam Goody resulted in a pittance actually finding its way to the artist’s pocket. But if you give that money directly to the artist, don’t you now have a greater say in what music that artist makes? The traditional model allows artists to do their thing, with the label as an intermediary between the artist and the desires of fans. Without that intermediary, fans can and probably should feel free to express their opinions on the work that they are paying for directly."

Because only studios, not artists, should be able to ignore what paying customers think!

Re:

It's almost as if we think that if we paid the artist directly for doing good work, they'd want to make more music for us to enjoy... Instead of the label saying they were losing them money, and the artist beholden to make an album like the industry wants instead of what they want.

What this may mean is that a small, rich, vocal cabal of music fans could grow to have an undue impact on the way music progresses, as artists within this direct patronage model have to appease those that put food on their table.

Isn't this what the producers and record labels have done almost since day one? Most art and music throughout history have been done by the artist to put food on the table for payment by some schmoe who wanted it done.

the main problem being that those who are condemning what Palmer and other artists are achieving, shout their condemnation louder than anyone shouts the achievements. this is typical of how the entertainment industries 'play there games'. add to that game that the majority of the national media outlets are controlled by the same people that control the entertainment industries and we see why there is much less publicity for anything that displays independent artist success.

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Hmm - I don't know what you'd consider to be "paying for enjoyment", but the existence of bars and brothels would seem to indicate that people are willing to spend money on transient experiences which I'd assume they're finding enjoyable.

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Not true. They got records, CDs, tapes and T-shirts, which are resellable commodities even today.

I've got a couple Abba T-Shirts and CDs. How much do you think I can reasonably get from reselling them? I hope to make back my investment and would love to make twice the amount I bought them for.

I also have some Creed CDs. Those ought to be worth at least three times what I bought for them. Yeah, good investment there.

I am sorry, Fans don't resell CDs, T-Shirts, etc. Fans buy them to support the artist (though most of us are realizing the artist isn't getting much for them) to continue making music we want to listen to. MP3s may be worthless to you, but I think Creed CDs, T-Shirts, etc., are equally worthless. The only value they have to me is to support the music, and I suspect that is a common attitude you'll find outside of the music industry.

Re: Re:

Not true. They got records, CDs, tapes and T-shirts, which are resellable commodities even today.

I've got a couple Abba T-Shirts and CDs. How much do you think I can reasonably get from reselling them? I hope to make back my investment and would love to make twice the amount I bought them for.

I also have some Creed CDs. Those ought to be worth at least three times what I bought for them. Yeah, good investment there.

I am sorry, Fans don't resell CDs, T-Shirts, etc. Fans buy them to support the artist (though most of us are realizing the artist isn't getting much for them) to continue making music we want to listen to. MP3s may be worthless to you, but I think Creed CDs, T-Shirts, etc., are equally worthless. The only value they have to me is to support the music, and I suspect that is a common attitude you'll find outside of the music industry.

Re: Re: Hilarious

We've had the "super-fan" thing in the past, it worked fine

I find it amusing that he's so worried about a few large donors having undo influence because... historically we've had something similar happen before. Back when the great classical composers were doing their thing the vast majority of them would be sponsored by one person, often a monarch. And somehow, even being horribly influenced by one "super fan", they managed to produce what are widely recognized as some of the greatest works of music ever made. That includes composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Mozart, etc.

Re: We've had the "super-fan" thing in the past, it worked fine

apparently the problem is that if you give money DIRECTLY to an artist, you then are expected (rightly so) to say if you like the art thats being produced and then can influence an artist to make more art that you like.

if you give money to a large corporation, you are (not quite so rightly so) expected to just shut your mouth about the art thats being produced and continue to fork over dollars and just OBEY.

so when you boil it all down, apparently the actual problem is, we have brains and can think.

Real Objection to Kickstarter is: It undercuts the labels' control.

I couldn't get past this part:

most of those artists lose money for the label but then the label will hit on a Mariah Carey or a Nickelback and make back enough money to recoup any losses.
The fact that he chose these two acts as "successes" shows how out of touch with reality he is.

Re: I couldn't get past this part:

To be fair, those acts are financially successful, and that seems to be all he cares about. They're also indicative of what the major labels are best at - bland, generic, radio-friendly, lowest-common-denominator fare that can be sold purely as a product, then discarded for a new model when sales drop.

No wonder they don't get situations where people who are passionate about the art itself are inspired to support it, or situations where people choose what they actually want as opposed to whatever product is being pushed by the majors.

Furthermore, this whole theory seems to be based on the idea that fans "don't get anything" out of supporting artists they love. He seems to be at a complete loss as to why anyone would pay for anything if they weren't getting money back.

Apparently he's unfamiliar with the concept of "supporting the arts", which some people do because it pleases them to support the arts. What Kickstarter and similar do is to make it possible for the overwhelming majority of us who can't write $50,000 checks to each kick in $5 and thus collectively support artists merely because we want to. Not because we're getting something, not because we think it's an investment that will yield a profit, not because we want control of the artist, but because we think they (like Amanda Fucking Palmer) are cool people doing cool things and we'd like them to be able to do more without having to sell out to parasites, I mean, record company executives. (My apologies to any actual parasites reading this for the negative comparison.)

Really..

I think it's actually a romp that you guys REALLY think it's about money. It's about control, bottom line. Who gets to do what and why, the money is the straight jacket that binds the "artist". Stop looking at the []

its true, look at George Lucas, because of the rabid fanboys who go nuts on him for every minute change/upgrade/redo of the movie HE CREATED, he doesn't want to make star wars films anymore, because the fans now feel they "own" the movies and have the right to tell him what to do

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Yeah, it must be awful to be George Lucas, to never have to work again a day in your life, or to be able to create anything that you want in any medium that you want just for the joy of creating it. Terrible. Hideous.

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Oh I don't know if being George Lucas would be all that great. The prospect of having to wake up every day and see George Lucas's beard in the mirror staring back at me gives me the fear, quite frankly.

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>because the fans now feel they "own" the movies and have the right to tell him what to do

What kind of bullshit is this? Fans are not exercising "creative license"; they are providing negative feedback over minor changes they deem unnecessary. Are fans not allowed to provide negative feedback?

The next thing we know, you'll be insulting everyone who thought Transformers 2 was a bad movie, and that includes most critics.

Re:

"the fans now feel they "own" the movies and have the right to tell him what to do"

I can't speak for other fans, but I've been asking for one thing and one thing only - the films I grew up with. I want a decent digital or Blu-Ray copy of the version I saw multiple times as a child, which inspired me to buy the merchandise that built his fortune in the first place. I don't want CGI, 3D, extra scenes, people from the prequel trilogy inserted or music changes. I just want the movie I loved as I remember it.

Apparently that's too much to ask for and asking him to allow me to buy it is telling him what to do. Oh well, at least he's not getting another penny from me with the crappy versions he's been working on for the last decade.

Re: Re:

They did release the theatrical version of the original trilogy as a second disk with the special editions a while back. Wasn't the greatest quality as it was basically just the laserdisc versions put on DVD. But it's the only version of the original movies I will ever own on DVD.

Ridiculous

I get the point: artists may lose track of their 'art and music' when fans start giving the money directly to them, because if empowers the fans to "boss" the artists around.

But I find it illogical. If I give money to an artist I love, it is because I love the person's 'art and music'. Yeah, there might be parts of it that I may dislike, but hell, that's just how it is. I will never try to change the artist; his/her uniqueness is what makes him/her valuable to me.

To suggest that a Record Label is 'healthier' for the music industry because it gives back to "investors" and in a sense patrols what happens is awful. The point of the music industry is the music, which can only be made successfully with performers. Performers who aren't fairly paid or who don't really get to see as much profit as they should get for their art is 'unhealthy' for the industry, in my opinion. Record labels can't function by themselves. Real artists can.

And to suggest that Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter is successful because of her "famous husband" is outright disgusting. I got to know Neil because of Amanda. Crazy, right?

Re: Ridiculous

who is this Neil you speak of?

(seriously, i'm not really a music person, so i'd not even heard of Amanda Palmer prior to reading about her on techdirt. this is actually the first bit of info i remember encountering that even tells me she Has a husband. hehe.)

AFP being on a big label with lots of success is important, because of the way that capital investment works. She is in a unique position. While it makes sense for her to do what she's doing, it is not a model that will work for everyone, and frankly I believe you're being willfully naive.

Structural position is important. If you look at the sociology of network theory, and of attainment, you'll find that one) people need networks for success and 2) those who are structurally situated with network connections are more successful. The danger here is that local bands will never scale the cliff that record labels previously gave artists (like AFP) climbing gear for. And to chalk it all up to her spunky personality is an attribution error--cause her spunky personality didn't magically produce the money necessary for the project and get Ben Folds to produce it.

Re: Re:

I don't think that's really true. And I would say that the majority of moderately successful bands that have label support these days would be unsuccessful if they hadn't had it. More specifically, genres like metal—where no one is earning massive amounts of money anyway—have labels that specifically work to promote the underground and labels that work to be on the cutting edge of what's cool in the underground.

I don't have a clue who Rebecca Black is and don't care. I'm not talking about stars, I'm talking about the kind of funding given to small bands so that they have something to promote in their van around the country. The kind of funding that those small bands could never have raised themselves.

Re:

Had a look at your link and would like to repent of the tone of my previous comment - because I have another response that I hope you will find more constructive.

You say that you hope Kickstarter is not the future of music because it cannot provide the bootstrap support needed by bands in early career (well to be precise bands in your genre).

Well the answer to that is that indeed Kickstarter (on its own) is not likely to be the future of music. However a clade of different crowdfunding platforms certainly are the future of music. It is naive to think that because the first (big) platform of a certain business model does not cater for a particular need it must follow that the business model cannot cater for that need. Kickstarter is very broad in its coverage. A similar platform dedicated to a particular genre of music could well provide the development expertise and funds you are looking for.

The label system would not provide what you want if there was only one label.

It is going to take a few years to educate the public into the crowdfunded patronage business model so please be patient - the things you are looking for will eventually arrive via this route - maybe you could take the initiative in setting up some of the infrastructure yourself?!

Re: "The danger"

"it is not a model that will work for everyone" - I think this point has been made about a gazillion times. There is no SINGLE new business model.
There are many, that's what's so great about it.

"The danger here is that local bands will never scale the cliff that record labels previously gave artists (like AFP) climbing gear for" - The real danger is that small acts continue to believe that their only opportunity is to sign-away their rights to the current label structure.
Each act is its own business and, accordingly, they need to find their own business models.
A lot of them will undoubtedly fail, but that happened before and will always happen in an open market. There is no glorious past to hark back to here, just a more flexible future that, at the least, allows artists to be directly in control of how they fail and how (and if) they have the wherewithal to take that into account and learn how to succeed.

Entertainment lawyer?

I won't bother to link to one (somewhat well known) individual (a lawyer, of course) within the entertainment industry, who simply doesn't deserve the publicity, but he publicly dismissed Palmer's massively successful Kickstarter campaign by suggesting that it was entirely based on the fact that she was (1) once on a label (2) has a famous husband (who this person believes, incorrectly, is running a copyright reform group) and most ridiculous of all (3) that he "wouldn't be surprised" if it turned out that Google was really behind her success.